Court sides with Hustler in Benoit nude photo dispute

A federal appeals court in Atlanta has sided with a racy magazine in a dispute over nude pictures of a model that were published after she was killed by her pro wrestler husband.

The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday said there wasn’t enough evidence to back a jury’s decision requiring Hustler Magazine to award nearly $20 million to the family of Nancy Toffolini Benoit.

Nude images of her were published in the magazine after she and her son were killed in 2007 by wrestler Chris Benoit.

if memory serves me right, Nancy originally was going to let them be published when she first took the pictures. she eventually backed out and asked for the pictures & negatives back. according to stories i’ve read, she had every reason to believe that she had everything returned.

if that’s true, then that leads me to ask if Hustler ever legally owned the pictures at all. if they did, they had a long time to publish them.